Apocalypse Week
Chapter 5
"Ok boys," Penny said once the thirty minutes were over and she and Sheldon were still alive. "That was a completely dismal show of cunning and showmanship. You could have at least pretended to try."
Only Howard had the grace to look a little ashamed.
"New rule," Penny told them. "If you play with everything you have tonight, I will treat you all to a pizza later from that greasy place Sheldon never lets you order from."
They muttered enthusiastically amongst themselves as Sheldon glowered at her. "No," he resisted.
"Sheldon," Penny warned, giving him meaningful and succinct glance. "We talked about this."
"I am patently opposed to this... barefaced form of subordinate subornment from you. You talked, I listened and resisted your attempts to wrestle control from my grasp. Maybe if you had a PhD, or even a Masters in psychology, I would make an attempt to apply your theories." He snorted. "Though the field of psychology is mostly misinformed drivel, I will admit that there is something to be said for understanding human motivations, but that something cannot be said by you."
Penny continued to give him that meaningful look. She amped it up a bit, reminding herself Sheldon rarely understood human expressions unless they practically screamed at him. And if that didn't work she could actually, you know, scream at him. "How is that hoity toity mindset working for you? You can't seem to rally the troops with your science, why not test my idea out like some kind of experiment."
"A social experiment?" Sheldon asked, spanning his glance over towards the boys. "I've always found fear to be a better motivator than bribery. How do you think I get Leonard to do anything? He knows there will be consequences he doesn't want to face if he doesn't cede."
"I'm right here," Leonard muttered.
"It's true, Sheldon is terrifying," Raj pointed out, looking towards Sheldon. "But I would also willingly do a lot of things for pizza right now. A lot of really nasty, dirty things that I wouldn't normally do because I'm starving dude, and that MRE you gave us was so gross I threw half of it out of the window. I think I hit someone walking by."
"I'd always do nasty and dirty things," Howard continued, "but I would give up sex right now for a pizza. Penny has the right idea."
And that was when Penny realized her mistake. Sheldon gave her a harsh look with an underlying flicker of betrayal shadowing his features. "We'll use tonight as a trial run," he agreed, the words strained as though they stuck in his throat. "Gentlemen, if you perform to Penny's satisfaction, she'll treat you to pizza." He then brushed past her, leaving her to deal with Howard's innuendoes at his phrasing and the excited murmurs of men with something to live for.
She was pretty good, dangling pizza in front of them. She also sucked, taking control away from Sheldon like that. She didn't mean to subvert his authority, and as she watched him tinker with his laptop with a frown on his face, she wondered if she had done even more than that. She had wrestled away something that meant so much to him that he planned it years in advance. Her intention had just been to help him, not to make it seem like she could do something better than he could.
"You don't have to come," she told him, sidling up beside him. "I didn't mean to exclude you, but for bribery to work it usually has to be something they don't get on a regular basis."
"I wouldn't recommend joining them, Penny. That restaurant doesn't have very high sanitation standards. They failed health inspection twice in the last five years."
Penny, a little closer to the restaurant business than the rest of the boys, knew exactly what that meant and her stomach flopped over in disgust. "Yeah, gotcha, blech."
"None of those are actual words in the English language."
"Nope," Penny said, popping the P. She watched over his shoulder as he pressed the enter button on his computer and her name came up. "Ooooh," she said with delight.
"Penny, you're up," Sheldon informed her.
For a second she wondered if he had done this on purpose to show his disapproval for her undermining his control, or for her treating the boys to pizza in cockroach central. But no, this was all random, right? That was the purpose of the program he wrote. Though, she supposed he had written it, so who knew what kind of cheats he put in it.
The three stooges looked up from their debate over what kind of pizzas to get with a look of apprehension on their faces.
Penny gave them a wicked grin. "That's right guys, prepare to be slaughtered."
Howard shivered.
x.x.x.
Penny really wanted to kill Sheldon. It seemed everything came down to that one goal. Kill Sheldon. She didn't care about Howard, Leonard and Raj. Her strategy wasn't to slowly take down the weaker of the species, she wanted to go right to the top. Remove the head, so to speak. In the animal kingdom she'd read somewhere that the lioness was the one who hunted, and she typically picked off the closest prey, or the easiest to kill. And ok, so she probably got that from The Lion King rather than a book, but it still wasn't the line of attack she wanted.
There was more glory in killing Sheldon.
Plus, she just really really wanted to take him down, to prove that she could. He seemed so untouchable, not just in this game but in everyday life, and she wanted to prove that she could so totally touch him. He might be beyond Mensa level genius, but Penny had her own strategies that he'd never really been able to anticipate.
That was because sometimes she just acted without thinking, without planning every movement. She was impulsive. The only thing Sheldon knew about impulsiveness was how it was defined in the dictionary. She wasn't sure if Sheldon knew yet or not that he was in direct competition with her as far as skills went. He had grown complacent with the competition, used to being the best when compared to Leonard, Howard and Raj. But now that the new kid was in town – well, she was ready to shake that up a bit.
Now was not the time to be completely spontaneous. She'd observed Sheldon's habits over the last few zombie encounters and she knew which side of the island he preferred to defend. What she wasn't sure was if he was playing chess master with her and anticipated that she would use these observations against him, or if he would underestimate her, confident in his own skills. Her pride hoped it was the former, but part of her highly anticipated it being the latter. She imagined the look on his face when she killed him with ease after he had given so much thought and attention to his own survival. She'd teach him a lesson no one else could, and that was to remind him that zombies would not stop just because he had managed to cleverly devise a plan against him.
Of course, she was aware there was a huge difference between Sheldon's plan for a real-life zombie attack and this game they were playing. She knew the lessons were supposed to be for the rest of the boys, and this one would include them too. It would be quite a shock to their system to experience zombie!Penny.
She didn't give them enough time to get comfortable in their positions, knowing that the sound of the three stooges settling would cover her movements. Sheldon would hear, but she doubted he'd be able to move quick enough if he even understood what the sounds meant.
She ran across the room, her sock feet barely making a sound as she moved, a skill she had learned as a child when she hunted with her father. She had taken off her jacket, not needing the protection now that she was one of the undead. This was going to hurt, but the pain would be worth it.
Penny leapt a few feet away from the island and landed chest-first on top of it, skidding across the top of the gleaming surface so quickly she thought she might overshoot her target for a moment, and panic filled her. Her bare arm shot out, damp skin catching against the marble just enough that she was able to drop down instead of soar over their heads. A sharp pain radiated up her elbow as she knocked it against the corner of the island as she fell...
...landing heavily on top of someone, their body cushioning her landing. Her legs kicked into someone else, and she could feel the domino effect of resistance of the people below her as they all tumbled and scattered beneath her weight like bowling pins. It all happened in a matter of seconds, so quickly that none of them had been prepared for an attack from above.
Penny recovered first, pulling back from the hard shoulder her face was smooshed against to find Sheldon beneath her, a stunned, wide eyed expression on his face.
SCORE.
She moved quickly, years of junior rodeo circuits had prepared her for how to take a hit and come back swinging, and she jumped back so that she could get a good hold on Sheldon, completely immobilizing him. It would have been so easy to simply bite him while they were all stunned, but she wanted to see the look in his eye as she turned him into a zombie. She wanted to see his fear and the moment realization turned into resignation.
His eyes focused on her and narrowed.
Suddenly, Penny's acting kicked in and she snarled, an inhuman sound emerging from the back of her throat. Her teeth were bared, eyes wild and feral as she scented metaphorical blood.
"What the?" Howard asked.
Penny turned her sights on him, snapping her teeth in his direction like a wild dog. Her image was more reaver than zombie, which the boys seemed to notice immediately if the way they recoiled was any indication. Leonard was rubbing his head from where her foot hit him and Raj was trying to squirm from beneath him. All three of them turned towards her as she gnashed her teeth, honest to god spittle flying in their direction.
Howard screamed.
She turned back towards Sheldon and licked her lips, toying with her prey. His eyes were comically wide and he was starting to thrash to get away. Penny had been anticipating this, hoping for it really. She knew a few tricks to keep him still and she allowed him to try to get free just so he'd understand who was in charge.
Sheldon was stronger than he looked though and almost managed to get loose and unseat her at the same time and Penny could feel the exertion of her muscles as she held him down, her hands forcing his wrists back onto the ground.
"Penny..." Leonard started, shutting his mouth and flinching away as she snarled at him again.
Howard let out another scream.
Ok, she was having a little too much fun with this. At any moment one of the three idiots behind her was going to remember they all had water guns they could use to defend Sheldon. She pressed herself tighter against him as he tried to free his arm, the water gun pressing tight against her stomach. Still snarling in an apparent frenzy for flesh she lowered her mouth to his neck and pressed a small kiss against the pulse in his throat.
His pulse was racing beneath her mouth. The girly part of her wanted to attribute that to the fact that she was on top of him in a compromising position, but the sad reality of it was that Zombie!Penny leaping on top of him, snarling and slobbering and hungry for human flesh, was probably the most terrifying thing to happen to him since Kripke chased him around the cafeteria with his killer robot.
In the space of seconds, Penny finished killing Sheldon and leapt into a crouch in front of the other boys. Howard was still screeching, a thin whining wail that made her think of a baby crying for his mother, and none of them had gone for their weapons yet.
Fools.
She attacked him next just to shut him up, diving for his leg and pulling it out from under him. She was in the zone, pumped off her triumph and the exertion it took to get this far and not even considering their safety anymore. Howard fell backwards on the floor, but dutifully set the timer on his watch, his mouth still letting out a constant stream of that high pitched sound.
Penny resumed her crouch, snarling at Raj and Leonard. Her hair was streaming over her face and she was breathing hard, her eyes fixed on her quarry. Her mind was running through the various ways she could kill them. Did she want to get it over with it quickly, or toy with them? Should she let them go for now so she could spend the next twenty minutes playing cat and mouse games until one of them begged her to kill them? That way, she'd have Sheldon by her side and she thought the two of them together would have twice as much fun playing with their food.
"Krishna protect me," Raj muttered, backing away from her. He was looking at her as though he could see the intent in her eyes.
"I used to slaughter cows for fun," Penny sneered, and while that wasn't really truthful, she'd never actually killed a cow with her bare hands in her life, he didn't have to know that. The way he turned ghost white made her think he believed her. "Your god has no power here."
Then she snapped at him with her teeth, loving the power and the dramatics of it all. Sheldon Cooper was a genius. This was the most fun she'd had in months. Raj was outright scrambling away from her, but that just made zombie!Penny mad, and she dove in for the kill.
That's when Leonard shot her in the head with his water gun.
"Oh, nicely done Leonard," she said, turning to smile at him, but he freaked out at her movement and shot her again.
x.x.x.x.
Sheldon Cooper took death very seriously. She had known this about him, had assumed that the silent and stiff way he was holding himself was part of his act. She hadn't expected him to start to shake part way through the two minute enforcement of her killing him.
"Sheldon?" she questioned, on the floor next to him. Howard's feet were next to her knees, his head in the opposite direction of hers so there was no way he could see what Sheldon was doing. "Sheldon?" she repeated sharply. "Are you ok?"
"Am I ok?" he echoed. "No I am not ok. I am not fine. I am not tolerable, satisfactory or any ill-conceived synonyms you could use to define my well-being. You assaulted my person. You put my safety at risk with your needless stunt. You may not be concerned about the condition of your cranium, but it would be a great loss to string theory, physics, and mankind if your negligence led to traumatic brain injury."
With her back against the cold floor, Penny started to laugh.
"Penny! This is no laughing matter." Sheldon turned his head to glower at her, his eyes piercing and full of indignation.
"No, no," she dismissed, still chuckling. "It's not that. It's just I've been expecting you to freak out over things all day. I'm amazed it took this long." She met his eye and realized he did not follow her logic, or maybe he just didn't find it amusing because his indignation was turning to hatred at a very rapid rate. It was the same look he gave her when she foiled laundry night, as though he was wavering between banishing her forever and blowing her head up with his mind. "You didn't hit your head that hard, did you? I don't see any blood."
She didn't think he had, he had already been crouched on the floor, so he didn't have very far to fall. She supposed the force of her body landing on him might have worsened the situation and internally she winced at the idea that he might actually have something to complain about.
"You wouldn't. It could be an intracranial hemorrhage and neither of us would even know it. A hematoma could be causing my cerebrum to swell as we speak, exerting more and more pressure on the delicate nature of the cerebral lobes until POP!"
"Your head explodes?" Penny asked.
"Not as viscerally as you're imagining. Instead I would likely die or worse, suffer some sort of insurmountable disability."
Penny rolled over towards him and slid her hand beneath his head, feeling along his scalp.
"Penny, what are you doing? You don't have any medical training. I doubt you'd be able to detect any cranial anomalies even with the use of a CAT scan."
"Come on Sheldon," Penny said, fingers carefully brushing over his hair. It was softer than she thought it would be, she realized, starting at his temples and running her hands through his hair. If this didn't distract him from thinking his head was going to explode, she didn't know what would. Plus, she loved having an excuse to touch him. "You know I was on the junior rodeo circuit. I've had more close calls with brain injuries than you could even imagine. I know more about this than you think I do."
She really didn't, but he didn't have to know that.
"Dementia pugilistica, better known as boxer's dementia, would explain your inability to remember not to sit in my spot," he mused, and then was off talking about what current issues his brain might be experiencing because she had jumped on him. His mouth ranting about intracranial hemorrhage subdural, subarachnoid, extradural, and intraparenchymal hematomas, cerebral contusions, concussions, and a bunch of terms Penny only understood the very basic significance behind. His eyelashes, however, were blinking wildly, showing his reaction to her hand carefully running through his hair.
"I don't feel any bumps or damage," she told him.
"Didn't you hear a word I just said?"
"Sure," she said with a careful smile, leaning closer to him. "You were talking about how you might have a brain bleed because you hit your head. Do you want me to kiss it better?"
Sheldon moved away from her so quickly, if he didn't have brain damage before, he probably just sloshed it around enough to have damage now. "My brain?" he asked incredulously.
"Uh, guys, the two minutes are up," Howard said nervously from the side. Penny jumped, forgetting he was there and realized that he had probably 1. heard the entire conversation, and 2. seen the way she was leaning over Sheldon, her hand in his hair. Sheldon likely would never associate something like that with anything other than checking the integrity of his skull, but Howard likely would. Especially considering how close she was to actually kissing Sheldon.
Kissing Sheldon.
Kissing Sheldon.
Oh geez.
Of course, Howard likely wouldn't comment on that, he'd be more concerned with what she could do for him. Penny tensed, waiting for the dirty joke.
"If Sheldon doesn't want it kissed, I have a brain you can put your mouth on and it isn't in my head."
"Don't be gross, Howard."
Leonard won that round.
x.x.x.
It was inevitable, sooner or later Sheldon's name was going to come up in rotation he was going to extract his revenge on her. She'd never seen him so angry. After he stopped shaking in fury, he went completely tense every time she was closer than three feet to him, a side effect of her attack (and completely disregard blah blah) that she hadn't taken into account in the three seconds she had spent planning. Something was going to have to give, and it was going to have to happen soon because otherwise he was going to start to see it as a grudge to hold. If there was one thing she learned about Sheldon over the years, it was that you didn't want him to have time to really develop a deep-set rancour against you.
For one thing it would kind of ruin her plan to prove herself to him.
For another, her name wouldn't sound nearly as nice if it was said with the same unadulterated hatred he pronounced Leslie Winkle, Barry Kripke or that Wil Wheaton guy.
Penny knew what she was going to have to do. When it was his turn, she was going to have to let him get her, but play it in such a way that he didn't realize that she had let him win. She didn't want to completely undo all the hard work she had put into being seen as the badest and bestest of his pupils, but she also didn't want him to completely hate her either.
When his turn came about and he narrowed his glances at her, eyes telegraphing his intentions, Penny's own eyes met his, her eyebrow quirking in challenge as she gave him an answering grin. Oh yes, she was going to go down fighting. Let's see how dirty Sheldon Cooper was willing to get.
"Sheldon's gunning for me, guys," Penny told the boys as they all congregated behind the couch. "Stay out of his way and I imagine he'll go easy on you."
Raj made a sound of distress.
"What happens when he catches you?" Leonard asked. "What chances do the rest of us have?"
"The two of you against the three of us?" Howard asked. "Those are terrible odds."
Raj made a second whine of distress.
"Do you have to pee?" Howards asked Raj, pausing his terrified glances over the back of the couch to look towards his best friend.
"A little," Raj answered. "Sheldon's turn is terrifying enough. Remember last year when he rigged the bookcase to fall on us and then waited until we crawled out from beneath the weight before he killed us?"
Penny shot an assessing glance towards the bookcase and nodded to herself at the brilliance of it.
"Of course I remember!" Howard snapped. "I won that round because I couldn't get out and had to wait until the three of you lifted the thing off me. For a while I was worried we'd have to call in the fire department to get it off, or worse, Penny!"
"Well, the thought of he and Penny together is much more terrifying."
Penny grinned at him. "That's sweet, Raj. Now shut up, I want to hear when he's coming."
"Guys, I think we need to protect Penny," Leonard said, ignoring her warning. "That way Sheldon won't get what he wants and we won't have to cower in fear without someone to protect us."
That said something, Penny realized, that they were all looking to her to protect them from Sheldon as though it was expected of her. She supposed that was the role she had taken on, but it gave her pause to realize that in a real-life zombie attack, they would likely expect the same thing. She loved the boys, she really did, but that was a little too much responsibility.
"Shhh," she warned, taking her job seriously, suddenly seeing this as a practice run. If she couldn't protect them from Sheldon, how could she protect them from a real zombie
"I wouldn't worry," Howard explained cockily, not even bothering with his assigned post of peering over the back of the couch. "Sheldon could take upwards to the full thirty minutes just to come up with a plan. Watch, I bet he's still way over behind the island glaring at—" Howard broke off with a strangled sound. He had been slowly twisting to look over the back of the couch.
She found her eyes following the same line of sight to find Sheldon standing on the other side of the couch, leaning over and staring down at Howard with an indiscernible expression on his face.
Raj made a third distressed whine, sitting heavily on the floor as he tried to scramble away but his legs wouldn't quite work.
Sheldon, almost in slow motion, reached out and grabbed Howard, dragging him over the back of the couch.
"Holy mother of God!" Howard was screaming, thrashing his feet wildly in an attempt to get loose.
It was like some kind of horror movie. One where the monster got a hold of one of the good guys and dragged them into the depths of the ocean/its stomach/back to the mothership. It was exactly like a real zombie attack. She had to give Sheldon credit for realism.
And she wasn't standing for it. Oh no, Penny was not the type of girl to sit back and watch as a friend got eaten by a zombie, nor was she the kind of girl to run away in fear.
Penny grabbed for her sword, her eyes narrowed in resolve, but was unable to pull it all the way out before Leonard's arms were around her. At first she thought he was trying to protect her, but she realized he was gibbering nonsensical things about Sheldon's creepy strength when fuelled by rage and how no one was safe if he was actually going to use his height to his advantage. Penny managed to yank her arm free, but not in time to help Howard.
"Save Penny, save the world!" Howard went down screaming.
That was when Penny's sword hit the back of Sheldon's neck.
x.x.x.x.
Raj went next, jumped by Sheldon on his way back from the bathroom and suddenly Penny found herself with only Leonard as an ally.
"It's ok Penny, I won't let him get you," Leonard promised, chest puffed out in an attempt to appear more confident and to give the illusion he could carry through with his promise.
She was barely listening to Leonard, on high alert for Sheldon to make his move. She had moved out from behind the couch and was standing in the area behind the chair, close to the window alcove without actually boxing herself in. She had decided that the reason Sheldon hated the couch was that it was less defendable than it seemed, especially after watching him drag Howard over the back of it. It was difficult to see over the top of it, and with three against two, it would be easy to box them in if team human couldn't even see team zombie coming. Plus, Sheldon was tricksy and after hearing the story of how he had rigged the bookcase last year Penny was almost worried he had some kind of way to make the couch fall on top of them. There was no way she was letting Sheldon win. No way at all. She had friends to avenge, honour to prove, Sheldons to triumph against.
In that moment, her eyes focused on the island as she stood in full visibility, daring them to come forward so she could dispatch of them with her sword and water gun, Penny didn't care if Sheldon hated her forever. Her breathing was composed, her sword held ready in her right hand and her gun steady in the other. There was a slight buzzing in her ears that she identified as the rush of adrenalin, the sound of traffic from outside and the faint murmuring of voices from behind the kitchen island.
"Let him come," she told Leonard in a moderated voice with a feral smirk. Later, he would quote her incessantly and say that this was the moment he started to worry she wasn't seeing this as a game anymore. Now, she barely registered Leonard's presence beyond where he was located and which way she would have to move to put Leonard between herself and Sheldon. She was almost a hundred percent sure Sheldon was instructing Howard and Raj that they weren't allowed to kill Leonard, as Leonard's death would mean she won the game. If she knew anything about Sheldon, if she could anticipate one thing at all, it was that Sheldon was not going to allow her to win and time was running out.
"Sheldon!" Penny called, singsong. "Shellll-don. I know you want me. I'm right here, ripe for the taking. Do you really think Leonard will present much challenge to you? You know what you want and you know what you have to do."
He stood quickly, popping up from behind the island and narrowed his gaze at her.
She observed him from across the room, her vision tunnelled to take in his face. He was so consumed with anger that one of his eyes twitched as he stared her down, hands against his temples as he tried to blow up her brain. Penny had never been good at resisting the little devil on her shoulder that told her to egg on moments like this, especially where Sheldon was concerned, so she stuck her thumbs in her ears and waved her fingers in a pretty good approximation of jazz-hands. Her tongue was out of her mouth and eyes crossed before she even realized what she was doing. It was so difficult to make amends with Sheldon when aggravating him was just so easy.
He made some kind of motion with his hands, and suddenly Raj and Howard were jumping out from behind the island and converging on Leonard. She frowned at the sight, so sure that she would be the target she had almost forgotten about him. Howard was screaming some kind of war cry, while Raj lopped forward in some kind of intimidating movement that seemed less frightening and more like one of those inflatable air dancer ad things.
Leonard stepped forward to confront them, surprising her with actually following through with his promise.
She was so bemused by the sight of them running straight by Leonard, abruptly turning away at the last second, that she almost missed the fact that Sheldon was approaching behind them. Sheldon, with no patience for the fact that Leonard was standing between him and his goal, actually willingly reached forward and touched Leonard. He touched him so hard, Leonard tripped sideways, falling over the arm of the couch and landing sprawled across the first two cushions.
By this point, Penny managed to remember to bring her weapons forward, but Sheldon had built up too much momentum for it to make much difference and she ended up taking a step backwards to give herself more space, and then a second because he was just scary fast and she wasn't prepared for something like this. On her third step, her back hit against the bookcase behind her and Sheldon was there, practically backing her into the enclosed space.
His hands landed on either side of her head before he became utterly motionless inches in front of her. No part of him was actually willingly touching her, but she was still trapped and there was no doubt in her mind that in a real zombie scenario that he would have her. She found her eyelashes fluttering in surprise at his nearness as his breath stirred her hair as he leaned in.
Oh my god, her brain screamed. Her heart was pounding rapidly in a rhythm she couldn't entirely explain away from zombie-related exertion. She was trapped between the bookcase and Sheldon, and it was possibly the hottest thing that had happened to her in a while, and it was Sheldon. Her brain was going into overdrive, wondering why she was reacting this way. She knew better than to look at any of his actions as anything other than platonic, so why did she feel his nearness so acutely? She lifted her chin so she could stare him in the eye, a zing of shock going through her system to find his gaze focused on her with the same intense stare he had levelled at her across the room. At this distance it felt a lot different, even if his meaning was still the same.
She took a step towards him, her breasts brushing against his chest as her eyes challenged him. She expected him to back down, to shy away and put the control back into her hands.
He didn't.
She realized that while she was trembling at his nearness and doing everything in her power to ignore how it was making her feel, he was still furious with her, not satisfied with his retribution. So close on the heels of her reaction to him on the floor behind the island, and Penny was aware of at least one thing: it was easier to forget why Sheldon Cooper had been firmly slotted in her 'don't look, don't touch' file when he was acting like this (and she couldn't forget the way he was wearing those jeans).
"You lose," he informed her, surprisingly succinct, and as per usual he was right.
x.x.x.x.
The boys were kind of getting into it, Penny noticed, inspired by her complete and utter pwning of Sheldon, and Sheldon's subsequent campaign to make her pay for it. She thought Howard just wanted to back her up against a wall. Regardless, she definitely owed them a pizza after this.
Somehow Raj's mouth came close enough to Sheldon's hand – most likely by accident, since Penny couldn't see any other way for Sheldon to be so careless with his limbs.
"NOO!" she yelled, bringing her sword down on his arm, effectively severing it above the elbow before any of them could blink. Or at least she would have severed it if her sword wasn't made of plastic and Raj was actually a zombie.
All four blinked at her.
"Is he dead or not?" Howard asked.
"This is unprecedented," Sheldon pointed out in a perplexed tone, staring at his hand. "The rule book doesn't stipulate what to do in the event of immediate amputation."
"I say we vote on it."
"That seems fair. Dead or not dead," Leonard offered. "Dead?" He, Howard and Raj raised their hands.
"Wait a second boys," Penny said with her brows narrowed in suspicion. They were so self-serving sometimes, putting their immediate needs ahead of the common good. Of course, Penny knew how to use that to her advantage. Men were relatively easy to figure out, even smart ones. It was the uber-geniuses she had problems with, and that was fine. Every girl enjoyed a bit of mystery. "You realize we're not just talking about this instance right? This isn't whether you think Sheldon should live or not, this is whether you think any time in the future where any one of you gets bit, someone can save you after... how many seconds do you think?" she asked Sheldon. "Five?"
He nodded. "It seems reasonable. Of course, such a short timeframe will lead to disagreements down the road. Was it five seconds or was it six? Who can tell without instant playback?"
Penny ignored that, focusing her attention on the three stooges. "So any of you can be saved after five seconds. Let's try this again. Dead?"
Howard and Leonard still raised their hands. They then looked over at Raj.
"What?" Raj asked. "I want to live and Penny is really quick on her feet. Sheldon's not bad either."
"Two against three. Congratulations Penny," Sheldon said, looking incredibly pleased. "You are the first to ameliorate the regulations through action rather than inaction."
"Ameliorate?" she whispered to Howard.
"Change for the better," he defined beneath his breath, so used to doing the same for Raj that he didn't even comment on her willingly addressing him.
"No problem, Sheldon," Penny said with a grin.
That was all it took. Suddenly Sheldon had forgiven her, easily conversing with her without giving her the hostile glances that had been crossing his face since the zombie games began. In fact, he was back to looking impressed and Penny's heart soared.
Sheldon was going to be a real problem if this was only the first day.
AN: Sorry for the long delay between chapters. I'll try to get back into a semi-regular updating schedule, though I'm working on a Glee St. Berry (Jesse/Rachel) fic. You're all welcome to join me over in that sinking ship.
Someone give me the low-down on what's going on in fandom. It's only been a few months and fics have disappeared, no one is updating, and morale is low. Rally, my friends, rally!